In the gaming industry in general and in casino environments as well as internet applications in particular it is desirable to provide gaming systems including bingo apparatus and systems that are attractive for customers to play while providing an acceptable return to the proprietor of the gaming systems. It is also desirable to provide multiplayer card gaming systems that are attractive for customers to play while providing an acceptable return to the proprietor of the gaming systems.
Regarding bingo games, most electronic bingo games are played in a similar manner to conventional bingo games where a player pays for and plays one or more bingo cards. Balls having marks or symbols corresponding to squares on the cards are sequentially drawn, or in the case of electronic systems, randomly generated. The first card in which a predetermined patterns of squares, such as columns, diagonals, rows or corners, is filled by symbols on the drawn balls is the winner. Typically, the prize is paid to the player with the winning card or if two or more cards have one of the predetermined patterns, the prize can be split. There are a number of variations on this approach especially in electronic implementations of bingo. For example, after the initial purchase of one or more cards, the game requires the players to pay a predetermined amount per card for the next ball or series of balls and thus the player has the option of only paying for cards that appear to be close to winning.
However, the bingo games as described above have a number of disadvantages. For example, since the games normally pay out only one large prize to the player having a winning pattern, a player playing a bingo game, especially with a large number of players, can play for a long time without winning anything and hence become discouraged.
Also, a number of problems can arise in implementing the bingo games as described above in an electronic format, or especially in internet based games. For example, since an internet based bingo game can have thousands of players playing a game where in addition each player can have a number of cards, the marking and evaluating each of what can be thousands of cards for a winning bingo pattern after each ball is drawn in a rapid and efficient manner can be a challenge.
Regarding multiplayer poker gaming systems, one approach to such a system involves each player playing on his own terminal or personal computer where under control of a central computer or internet website the players play against each other. The terminals can have displays showing the hands as dealt, winning hands and other game information. The game can be played using the central computer to deal each player a hand from one or more simulated card decks corresponding to casino type games where a dealer deals hands from one or more card decks. However, this approach tends to be effectively limited to about ten players (10 players×5 cards per player=50 cards from a 52 card deck). For such a system with more than ten players, it becomes difficult to construct a prize structure when dealing is done from a single deck or even a combination of multiple decks and especially for internet games which might have thousands of players in a single game. As a result, poker type games with very high payouts based, for example, on the number of players in the game become especially difficult to construct.
One example of an attempt to provide enhanced player appeal is to structure a multiplayer gaming system such that each individual gaming machine includes a set of player controls in which a game such as bingo, keno or poker can be played and a first display for displaying the game as it is played and further includes a second display for displaying the outcome of the game in a different game format. The second display can for example display the outcome and indicate the payout of a bingo game in the form of spinning slot machine reels. Examples of these types of gaming systems are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,322,886 and 7,641,552.
However, the dual game display approach as described above does not address the problem of providing prize structures, especially where one type of game is played and the outcome is displayed in a different game format, such that the prize structures are sufficiently flexible to allow game designers to optimize payoff tables for maximum player appeal while providing a specified return to the game system proprietor.